Cédric Ouanekpone, medical coordinator of the Mama Ti Fatima project
The XXXVIII Africa Meeting will address the impact that the phenomenon of talent drain has on the continent. Within the framework of this event, on January 31, the young Central African doctor Cédric Ouanekpone will receive the MN Fraternity Award 2025 for his commitment to improving access to decent health conditions in the Central African Republic.
Upon concluding his medical specialization in Strasbourg (France), Dr. Cédric Patrick Le Grand Ouanekpone was very clear that he was going to return to his country, the Central African Republic (CAR). He rejected the seductive contract they offered him and it was no use trying to renegotiate his salary upwards. He was the first nephrologist in his country and knew that the National Hemodialysis Center in Bangui, built in 2020 by the African Development Bank and handed over to the Government for management, had not been operating for two years due to lack of a specialist. Ouanekpone assumed medical direction of the center and lives immediately began to be saved.
Born in Bangui on March 8, 1986, Cédric was baptized when he was two years old in Our Lady of Fátima, a parish administered by the Comboni Missionaries that is very important in the doctor’s biography. The first riots that the country experienced in 1996 forced the schools to close and Cédric benefited, along with other boys and girls, from a school support program organized by the parish. On the recommendation of the then parish priest, the Italian Father Giovanni Cosentino, in 2000 he entered the minor seminary of the Carmelites. He wanted to be religious, but three years later he was attracted by scientific research.
War
When the Seleka rebellion broke out in 2012, the young man had completed his medical studies at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Bangui, although due to the war he had to wait to obtain his degree. The cycle of violence continued for several years, turning the Parish of Fátima into an immense refugee camp with more than 5,000 people welcomed. Its manager, the Ugandan Fr. Moses Otii, relied on Cédric and other young health workers from the parish to face, until the arrival of the NGOs, this health emergency (see MN 711, pp. 44-47). Cédric cared for the elderly and children with hardly any resources and helped dozens of women give birth.
In 2014, in the midst of the crisis, the French NGO Cercle de Haute Réflexion sur la Jeunesse arrived in the country with a shipment of medicines and Cédric was in charge of consulting and establishing treatment for countless people, including from the Muslim neighborhoods of PK5. He had to do it almost secretly to avoid being accused of helping the enemy in a conflict that was unfairly classified as interreligious. When the NGO wanted to pay for his services according to European standards, Dr. Ouanekpone refused, citing his humble contribution to his brothers and sisters.
Five years later, the NGO presented the young doctor’s candidacy for the World Humanism Prize. In the Macedonian town of Ohrid he received this recognition from former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, also awarded on that occasion.
Mama Ti Fatima
Cédric Ouanekpone chose the specialty of Nephrology, one of the most demanding, to save lives in his country, where so many people affected by kidney failure were dying irrevocably due to lack of specialized medical care. After training in his country, he continued his studies in Senegal (three years) and in France (one more), for which he received support, among others, from the Our Lady of Fátima Parish.
Currently, his service at the National Hemodialysis Center in Bangui allows him to receive a regular salary, but guided by his Christian faith, Cédric has never wavered in his social commitment. The lack of quality health services led him to champion the Mama Ti Fatima medical complex project, supported by the Our Lady of Fátima Association for Development (ANDFD, for its acronym in French), created on July 11, 2020.
The doctor’s affable and communicative character, but above all his great capacity for leadership and teamwork, has managed to enthuse other young doctors and healthcare workers who share his vision, which has allowed the medical complex to grow in front of the parish. In 2020 the pharmacy was opened and in 2023 the medical analysis center. In December, the support of the Austrian organization Missio-Vienna allowed the emergency clinic building to be completed and work on the maternity ward will soon begin with financing from the American organization The Papal Foundation. In addition, the collaboration between the ANDFD and the Diocese of Mbaiki has allowed the organization of nine mobile clinics to bring medical care to the most disadvantaged people.
The Central African health worker combines his multiple activities with teaching at the Bangui Faculty of Health Sciences, the only medical university center in the entire country. He also directs the doctoral theses of young doctors, convinced of the fundamental role of training. «The more health professionals we have, the better our future will be, because the situation in the CAR is terrible. We have one of the lowest percentages of doctors per inhabitant in the world (0.21 per 10,000 inhabitants) and no specialist doctors in the interior of the country. The few of us are in Bangui,” he points out sadly, but without a paralyzing pessimism. To those doctors who “by free choice” work outside the CAR, he sends a message: “It is never too late to return, because your presence here is essential and you can help more people than if you stay outside.”
